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The Projection Booth Podcast

Episode 570: Arsenic & Old Lace (1944)

The Projection Booth Podcast

The Projection Booth

Film Reviews, Film Interviews, Film History, Tv & Film

4.8686 Ratings

🗓️ 29 April 2022

⏱️ 166 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

We’re wrapping up Screwball month with a look at Frank Capra’s Arsenic and Old Lace. Released in 1944, though shot several years before that, the film stars Cary Grant as Mortimer Brewster, a drama critic and avowed bachelor who has found the love of his life in Elaine Harper (Priscilla Lane) who lives right next door to his kind-hearted aunts, Abby and Martha. There’s just one thing…. Abby and Martha have a terrible habit of poisoning their single, lonely old men boarders.

Sylvia Hubbard and Kat Ellinger join Mike to discuss the film while special guest Joseph McBride (Frank Capra: The Catastrophe of Success) talks about Frank Capra while Charles Dennis reveals just a few of the things he's uncovered for his upcoming book There's a Body in the Window Seat!: The History of Arsenic and Old Lace.

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Transcript

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0:00.0

The weather. Tomorrow, expect a... Biting cold front. Hmm, how naughty. I wonder what I'll be wearing or taking off. The night will be wild and untamed. Expect heavy, lashing rain that'll soak you to the skin. By Monday, temperatures will rise slowly but surely reaching their peak in the afternoon.

0:23.0

Not in the mood for miserable weather?

0:25.8

Fly cheaply to Turkey with Sun Express.

0:28.6

Sun Express, non-stop sunshine.

0:36.2

Hold your ears, folks.

0:38.3

It's showtime. People pay good money to see this movie.

0:40.3

When they go out to a theater, they want cold sodas, hot popcorn, and no monsters in the projection booth.

0:47.3

Everyone pretend podcasting isn't boring.

0:49.3

Turn it off.

0:51.3

Turn it off.

0:56.4

Turn it off. Turn it off.

1:50.0

Turn it off. The Shh. Oh, Charge! Charge! Charge!

1:52.0

The lockhouse! No, I can't, I won't. I can't go through with it. I won't marry you and that's that.

2:18.3

Look, don't you see, marriage, it's a, it's a superstition. It's old-fashioned. It's, it's, I, I, uh, oh.

2:29.3

Now, Mr. Brewster!

2:37.0

Now look, don't you... Goodbye, dear. Come by the air. Come by there. But there's a body in the window seat.

2:53.6

Yes, dear, we are there in the window seat.

3:09.8

Yes, dear.

3:11.3

We know who.

3:14.1

Oh. The Welcome to the projection booth. I'm your host, Mike White. Join me once again is Ms. Kat

4:02.2

Ellinger. Hello. Also, joining us in the booth is Ms. Sylvia Hubbard.

4:07.9

Hello.

...

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